Praying for the Holy Spirit

Monthly Archives: May 2016

The usually sensible Fr Longenecker has a piece over at Crux http://www.cruxnow.com/church/2016/05/27/radical-catholic-blogs-may-be-a-cesspool-but-saying-so-wont-help/ on the scandal involving a Fr Rosica who began to sue a traditionalist blogger Vox Cantoris http://voxcantor.blogspot.ca/ last year. Rosica claimed that this blogger practiced character assassination and was filled with too much venom and hatred. It is not clear what Fr Rosica was suing about because you cannot sue someone for being full of hatred. Anyway the usually sensible Fr Llongenecker wrote a piece yesterday over at Crux arguing that suing traditionalist bloggers would do no good as they ‘will remain a cesspool of hate and venom’. I would have thought that the usually sensible Father would have denounced the practice of suing fellow Catholic bloggers, traditionalist or otherwise as being immoral in itself unless there was a case for something like libel. But Longenecker instead more or less endorsed the view that traditionalist bloggers were filled with hate and were simply spilling bile. I am amazed someone as sensible as Longenecker can think this about people who dedicate their lives to fighting for the Church! When I review the traditionalist blogs mentioned in his piece I do see a lot of venom and some crazy stuff but no more than I see in the mainstream catholic bogs I visit. There is hatred, venom, shrill wild claims, nonsense, and character assasination all over the Catholic blogosphere.–both in mainstream Vatican II Catholics and among traditionalists….though I have to say that the only heresies I see are promoted by Vatican II Catholics not the traditionalists. I do not see the traditionalists claiming that all religions are equally true and that there is salvation outside the catholic church but I have seen that argued in many mainstream catholic blogs. Among the blogs that Longenecker dissed was ipeter5….Now take a look at who writes for that blog

Obviously these are good, smart, competent, accomplished people all of whom are orthodox Catholics and all of whom are in good standing with the Church. Instead of threatening to sue them we should be cheering them on even when we do not agree with some of the things they say. When they say crazy stuff we should critique it just as we do when non-traditionalist bloggers do so. In Fr Longenecker’s account of the Rosica affair, Rosica dropped the suit against Vox Cantoris when Michael Voris created bad publicity over the whole thing but in my reading of the affair Rosica dropped the suit when figures within the Church hierarchy commented in the press that church figures should NOT be attempting to silence militant bloggers.

May I recommend to my fellow Catholic bloggers, traditionalists and mainstream alike, the model we have adopted here at saveourcatholicchurch? We publish both traditionalist views and mainstream Vatican II, pro Pope Francis views and everything in between. I myself have written pieces that many consider traditionalist and other pieces in praise of Pope Francis (for his encyclical on climate change for example). We cannot arrive at the truth without talking to one another, without conflict and debate. Error has no rights it is true but we first need to decide where the error lies in our Church today and that can only be decided via prayer, open debate and fasting.

The True History of Women Deacons

When Pope Francis announced his willingness to appoint a commission to study whether women can serve as deacons in the Catholic Church, my first thought was: Here we go!

And sure enough, FutureChurch, the liberal Catholic organization that has subtly pushed for the ordination of women to the hitherto all-male Catholic priesthood, not only praised Francis for his statement but announced its intention to set up a CatholicWomenDeacons.org website, sponsor a retreat for women feeling the “call” to become deacons, and, clearly most important of all, lobby the U.S. bishops to start pestering Rome about opening the diaconate to the female sex. The less subtle Women’s Ordination Conference (WOC) faulted Francis for not going all the way and opening the priesthood to women, but it did offer him some limited praise: “WOC advocates that a new commission on the diaconate include discussions on priestly ordination for women in the Roman Catholic Church.”

The “discussions” WOC has in mind seem to be historical in nature. In its press statement, WOC invokes “historical evidence” of the existence of “several women deacons” in the early Church and asserts that, in ordaining women deacons, the Vatican would merely be “recognizing its own history.”

But a look at that history may cause us to doubt whether the aspiring women deacons of today really are in line with the historical Christian women they claim as their forebears.

There is no question that women deacons, even ordained women deacons, performed an ecclesiastical function for many centuries in the early Church. Exactly what that function was, however, is difficult to figure out. We know of Phoebe, the “deacon of the church,” whom Paul mentions in his letter to the Romans. But the Greek noun “diakonos” that Paul uses—which in classical Greek had no specific female gender—meant “servant” during the first century. The same noun is used in John’s Gospel to denote the servants who filled up the water jars during the wedding feast at Cana, and it appears in the Acts of the Apostles with respect to the seven men who were chosen to feed to the poor while the apostles focused on prayer and preaching.

Christian documents of the third and fourth centuries provide more detail, and they seem to depict an increasingly elaborate and formally honored role for women deacons. These documents refer specifically to deaconesses (“diakonissai”), and at least one mentions a bishop’s laying his hands on these women in a kind of ordination ceremony that recognized their special office. Other early documents, mostly from the Eastern Church but also occasionally in the West, name some women as “deaconesses.” These women were almost invariably either widows or celibates who had chosen some form of the monastic life. Their duties largely consisted of charitable works and participating in the baptisms of adult women, in the days when immersion baptism was universal and it would have appeared scandalous for a male priest to immerse a naked woman. These deaconesses sometimes assisted priests at the liturgy—a not uncommon practice among nuns whose only male contact was their priest.

The nunnishness of the early Christian women who became deaconesses is striking. And it is a feature that persisted, even into fairly recent history. Deaconesses disappeared from both the Western and Eastern Orthodox Churches during the Middle Ages, when the office of “deacon,” with its specifically liturgical functions of preaching and reading the Gospel, became a formal part of Holy Orders and thus open only to men. Only the Armenian Church continued to ordain deaconesses to serve at the altar, up through the early twentieth century. And it should be noted that every one of those Armenian deaconesses was a nun, often the abbess of her convent.

I suspect that few of the women who suddenly feel the “call” to the Catholic diaconate in light of Pope Francis’s statement will likewise be willing to enter nunneries—much less to adopt the very feminine title of “deaconess.” Most of those pushing for women deacons are interested not in restoring an aspect of early Christian history but in acquiring political power in today’s Catholic Church. Their goal is the priesthood and, ultimately, the episcopate—just as it was for women deacons when the Anglican Church began recognizing their office as part of Holy Orders during the 1960s. Our aspiring women deacons view the female diaconate not as a historical revival, but as a camel’s nose in the clerical tent.

Charlotte Allen is a writer living in Washington, D.C.

First Things is a great online/print journal! Be sure to check them out!

As the article, below indicates, some people (like me) are disturbed by this type of research. It’s clear that a significant increase in science accompanied by a significant decrease in the value of human life, would eventually reach a tipping point.

– In your speeches in Europe, you refer to the “roots” of the continent without ever describing them as Christian. Rather, you define “European identity” as “dynamic and multicultural.” In your view, is the expression “Christian roots” inappropriate for Europe ?

Pope Francis : We need to speak of roots in the plural because there are so many. In this sense, when I hear talk of the Christian roots of Europe, I sometimes dread the tone, which can seem triumphalist or even vengeful. [to who????] It then takes on colonialist overtones. John Paul II, however, spoke about it in a tranquil manner. [oh my God!!!]

Yes, Europe has Christian roots and it is Christianity’s responsibility to water those roots. But this must be done in a spirit of service as in the washing of the feet. Christianity’s duty to Europe is one of service. As Erich Przywara, the great master of Romano Guardini and Hans Urs von Balthasar, teaches us, Christianity’s contribution to a culture is that of Christ in the washing of the feet. In other words, service and the gift of life. It must not become a colonial enterprise. [has this ignoramus ever heard of the Renaissance??!!?]

[gee, it’s a good thing it did become that – or his native Argentina might have NEVER known the saving grace of Jesus Christ!]

– The fear of accepting migrants is partly based on a fear of Islam. In your view, is the fear that this religion sparks in Europe justified?

Pope Francis: Today, I don’t think that there is a fear of Islam as such but of ISIS and its war of conquest, which is partly drawn from Islam. It is true that the idea of conquest is inherent in the soul of Islam. However, it is also possible to interpret the objective in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus sends his disciples to all nations, in terms of the same idea of conquest…” [wait a second, did he just equate jihad with the great commission?!!!]

As several news services are reporting this morning, at a meeting with his LCWR New-Age “nuns”, Francis has agreed to set up a commission to study the possibility of ordaining women as deacons. Perhaps he forgot that the so-called International Theological Commission in his own sect already did this back in 2002, or maybe he just wants to add some “fresh insights” that will open the door to female clergy in some ambiguous footnote he can later claim he doesn’t remember.

As a quick reality check for how things are looking in the Catholic Church by contrast, we recall that Pope Benedict XIV had something to say about the issue of women even so much as serving at the altar:

“Pope Gelasius in his ninth letter (chap. 26) to the bishops of Lucania condemned the evil practice which had been introduced of women serving the priest at the celebration of Mass. Since this abuse had spread to the Greeks, Innocent IV strictly forbade it in his letter to the bishop of Tusculum: “Women should not dare to serve at the altar; they should be altogether refused this ministry.” We too have forbidden this practice in the same words in Our oft-repeated constitution Etsi Pastoralis, sect. 6, no. 21.”

As we have seen in the last 3 years, with Francis, anything is possible, so those who are tempted now to rashly declare that “this will never happen”, had better think again. Too much of what many thought “could never happen” has already happened. The laundry list of Francis’ scandals, heresies, errors, and related chaos is getting longer and longer, but we’re trying to keep up.

No word yet on what impact Francis’ decision about studying the issue of women deacons may have for transgenders or transsexuals in the New Church.

They can’t figure out why no girl wants to be a nun anymore…

[ NB: Novus Ordo Watch is a sedevacantist site – tho’ I am not a sedevacantist, I am intrigued by their appraisal of the shenanigans of this pope and of the leadership et.al. in the Vatican and with their salient criticism of the way V2 has rolled out. ]

Henry James Sr in a letter to his two sons: “Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential dearth in which its subject’s roots are plunged. The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters.”

George Bernanos from “Under the sun of satan”: ” The witness which is borne by saints must be torn with irons out of their bodies”

From Don Calacho:

The people does not convert to the religion preached by a militant minority, but to the one imposed by a militant minority. Christianity and Islam knew it; Communism knows it. (#2,037)

The contemporary Church prefers to practice an electoral Catholicism.
It prefers the enthusiasm of great crowds to individual conversions. (#2,977)

The separation of Church and State can suit the Church, but it is disastrous for the State because it delivers it over to pure Machiavellianism. (#2,497)

Modern man does not love, but takes refuge in love; does not hope, but takes refuge in hope; does not believe, but takes refuge in a dogma. (#408)

She is our Mother, the mother of all flesh, a new Eve. But she is also our daughter. The ancient world of sorrow, the world before the access of grace, cradled her to its very heart for many centuries, dimly awaiting a virgo genetrix. For centuries and centuries those ancient hands, so fill of sin, cherished the wondrous girl-child whose name even was unknown. A little girl , the Queen of the Angles!…The simplicity of God, that terrible simplicity which damned the pride of the Angels…Our Lady knew neither triumph nor miracle. Her son preserved her from the least touch of the savage wing of human glory. No one has ever lived, suffered, died in such simplicity, in such deep ignorance of her own dignity…For she was born without sin-in what amazing isolation. A pool so clear, so pure, that even her own image-created only for the sacred joy of the Father-was not to be reflected. The Virgin was innocence. The eyes of our Lady are the only real eyes that have never countenenced shame-they are the eyes of gentle pity, wondering sadness, and with something more in them, never yet known or expressed, something which makes her younger than sin, younger than the race from which she sprang and though a Mother by grace, Mother of all grace…”

From G. Bernanos, Diary of a country priest. NY: Carroll and Graf, 1932/2002;, p211

Flection (or flexion) is defined by the Oxford as “The action of bending or the condition of being bent, especially the bending of a limb or joint:
‘flexion of the fingers’…”

It is a marvel of ancient technology that man was able to learn to successfully bend tree limbs into what would become magnificent tools for hunting and formidable weapons of war. The later innovation of the layering and lamination of different woods that would lend both flexibility AND strength to the bow was significant as well. That primordial bending of a piece of wood to capture (and hold) that kinetic energy until release was something that to this day brings so much enjoyment to this – your humble (but, devilishly handsome) blogmeister. Its kinda like golf. I hate golf – but I love the repetition and muscle-memory exercises of traditional archery! It is actually very relaxing.

These are my two favorite bows. The one on the left is a custom Hickory recurve that has a sweet Kodiak leather grip and is set up for left-eyed shooters like me. One shoots with one’s “dominant eye” as opposed to being merely left or right-handed. It is the dominant eye that finds the mark/target and follows the arrow through to release. This is a 60″(60″ tall – unstrung) – 55# bow – that in our parlance is how we measure the height and the amount of weight (in this case 55lbs) one pulls in order to get the nock of the arrow to a comfortable spot on our chin before release. The cheaters are the modern “compound bow-shooters” who rely on a more modern/sophisticated series of pulleys and strings to actually HOLD that weight in limbo instead of bearing it as we do in “traditional archery”. With this traditional bow, the archer must hold the weight until the desired mark is found and is satisfactorily within range – and then smoothly release the weight/tension on the bowstring – sending the arrow to it’s mark.

The bow on the right in the photograph is my Bear bow – their “Grizzly” model. Bear Archery has been building bows and selling archery equipment since the early 1930’s. This is my 58″ 55# Bear recurve – with a Brown Hard-Rock Maple riser and Clear Maple and black fiberglass limbs. It is smooth, smooth, smooth…like a baby’s bum!

Here is some practice results with the “wild boar” target my son got me for Christmas last year.

You’ll notice too many belly-shots. Not a good thing to do to a wild pig… unacceptable – not humane hunting. So, I must get better and practice more ‘instinctive shooting”. Here are my latest results:

Perfect grouping! Ready for Hog Season! …nothing like a pig-roast with a animal brought down with a man’s own bow! I must admit, when I’m tired of the boar target, I use another target that I call the “The Intruder”. The Intruder is an imaginary rampaging-Muslim clamoring over the Vatican Walls to kill our pontiff and make the holy basilica a mosque. I am (in my game) a member of the Swiss Guard …and I assure you that I’ve sent The Intruder directly to meet his virgins – many, many times over!